Musings of a fantasy author in a wibbly wobbly world.

Not a coder? You know nothing, you have no opinion and Mono is great!!!!! ?

A shorter post on the ongoing story of Mono. I am not going back into if you should use it or not and re-iterate what I always say, decide for yourself. This piece is a short response to the points made by Mr De Icaza on Information week, which can be found in context here: http://tinyurl.com/y9xhcc9

Firstly I will start off with what I agree fully with Mr De Icaza:

Programmers are people with strong opinions. Some people would like more Python or Java; more power to you. Use what you want!

and I would say the same to the end-users who are deciding if they want to run Mono apps.

Then (IMO) Mr De Icaza lets himself down by making this remark:

But people like [the anti-Mono advocacy group] Boycott Novell do not write a single line of code, so I think there’s advocacy coming from people who do not contribute in any real way. They don’t even come to the conferences; they’re not part of the community in a substantive fashion.

Firstly let me set this straight, you can hold me to this and I stand by it 100%. There is no anti-mono advocacy group that I am aware of in the IRC group or the BN site. The website is Roys opinion and the chat room contains people with diverse opinion. The BN chat logs are even published so that people can see for themselves if there is any conspiracy there. I would not seek to speak for Roy or anyone else on the channel, but what I will say (and repeat for the Nth time) is that my reasons for not wanting Mono and its associated wares are wholly different to other people in that chat room.

Mr De Icaza, if you are trying to suggest that there is some organized conspiracy/plan at work here then I put it to you that you are a wrong. Plain and simple.

Furthermore, there is no Boycott Novell group, the room is a collection of people who enjoy chatting to each other, nothing more. Do not hold a group responsible for a single persons opinions/views whoever they belong to or whatever they say. Mr De Icaza, remember how I didn’t agree that Jo Shields recent behaviour (documented here) was representative of Mono? Remember?

As Ive said before, an opinion not in favor of Mono is often met with all sorts of allegations (not as part of some concerted effort but more, IMO because of some truly anti-social users). Talking of which: “ do not write a single line of code, so I think there’s advocacy coming from people who do not contribute in any real way. ” – are you really sure about that Mr De Icaza? and even if you were right, why should anyone’s opinion be supressed? Like I said before, free speech appears to be fine as long as its pro-mono. Oh and you can’t dislike Mono if your not a coder, so all you “normal” users better “suck it up“? (my words)

Now going back to Mr De Icaza and his statement of:

They don’t even come to the conferences; they’re not part of the community in a substantive fashion.

I would completely agree (if we are talking Mono) I want no association with _that_ community.

I hope that clears it up. The Mono topic gets far more attention than it should, at least with Mr De Icaza speaking on Informationweek it appears you can’t post comments without registering, that should prevent too much “anti-mono advocacy” eh Mr De Icaza?

I would not know, although I would doubt if Mr De Icaza would let it stand if it wasn’t what he meant.

It’s all very similar to the “killing foss” opinion that one gets when someone can’t have a sensible debate.

I am sure Mr De Icaza is a very nice person, I am sure he is not slow, so why then does he insist on trying to convince people Mono is great, is not a trap by Microsoft and yet praises Microsoft technologies? If he loves Microsoft products there is no problem with that at all, but then he shouldn’t wonder why some people are distrusting of Mono and its real worth to FOSS/Linux.

This isn’t rocket science and add the allegations that are made against MS into the equation and I can’t understand why Mr De Icaza thinks there won’t be a problem.

The last article on Mono was read by over 2500 (and rising) people. Not one person came forward to say “actually Mono is great” or similar. It appears Mr De Icaza cannot see this nor can understand what the problem is.

Maybe its time for Mr De Icaza to give Mono related posts over to someone else, that way he can concentrate what it appears he is so amazed by, that being Microsoft technologies. That IMO would be a great way to further the Mono viewpoint without being caught up in the Microsoft issue and Mr De Icaza could “drool” all he wanted.

Just my opinion.

*NOTE TO ALL: Posts will be infrequent (if at all today) since Im on baby sitting duty for my young lad who appears to be suffering with the flu I had last week. I appologize, I am not being rude, I will try and get around to answering my mountain of emails this weekend (sunday most likely)

I wonder if Mr. De Icaza would consider Richard Stallman to be a member of the anti-mono conspiracy that does not write a single line of code or contribute to the community? After all, Mr. Stallman has warned against writing new code with C#, mono and other Microsoft technologies. Perhaps Mr. Icaza thinks of Mono as more important for software freedom than Mr. Stallman’s advocacy, or perhaps Mr. Icaza is thinking of some other community when he talks about conferences. Surely Mr. Icaza would not compare the importance of Mono with that of GCC and the FSF unless he was making some kind of Beatles “Bigger than Jesus” joke.

“People who don’t contribute to the nuclear technology are not entitled to criticize it (even if a nuclear power plant is built near their home).”
“People who don’t contribute to the silicon industry are not entitled to criticize it (even if such a plant is feeding its wastes to the source of their drinking water).”
This line of logic surely will be welcomed by many parties who engage in “making the world a better place” while denying any inconvenient “side effects” that poison the world. Except that in mono’s case, I am not sure which part is the true intention and which part is the side effect.

A nicely written piece, informative, coherent and intelligently put forward, respect due for a welcome relief from the usual dross I find on the internet, I will be watching out for more of your posts.